


come together (over me)

by hellblazeit



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Campaign 2 (Critical Role), Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Critical Role Spoilers, Death as a Team-Building Exercise, critical role - Freeform, my heart hurts this is how i cope, really this is more of the journey than the actual resurrection, spoilers for episode 26, take that as you will, we're au now lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 10:00:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15289071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellblazeit/pseuds/hellblazeit
Summary: He could have avoided this, this terrible numbness inside his chest that's colder than the snow around him and that only comes from feelings, fromattachment, from being in far deeper than he'd thought he could be, far deeper than he promised himself he'd ever go. If he'd justleft.In which Caleb Widogast is smart enough to know he cares, and not smart enough to stop.-caleb pov of the mighty drei finding solutions for their brand new mollymauk-shaped problem.





	1. one thing i can tell you is you've got to be free

Caleb Widogast is smart. He’s incredibly smart. A keen mind with a gift for magic, that was how he got noticed so very long ago in Blumenthal, back before he was broken, and even now that he’s enough shattered pieces to make a bag of broken glass jealous, he knows that much is still true. He’s smart.

So why, with snow falling down on his shoulders like ashes ( _not ashes, not again_ ) and the jagged breaths of someone else close by trying to keep it together, can’t he get his legs to move?

The _whole_ of him moves, sure. He'd read somewhere that the human body is incapable of true stillness. His shivers with cold and shakes with something unnamed and unpleasant and somehow even colder, but his feet won’t come up under him and lift him off his knees where he’s fallen. They won’t bring him to a height and higher with Beauregard - the source of the jagged breaths, he observes from what seems like very far away - and they won’t even shift enough to keep the snow from soaking through the knees of his trousers. So how, then, are they to be expected to carry him the distance to the fallen purple shape in the snow, hidden before by the wagons that are mere shadows in the distance now, so he can check for a pulse and make sure everything is alright?

It isn't. It's been several minutes. He knows what the stillness means.

Someone’s talking nearby: a low voice, agitated and emphatic, with just enough of a shake to the ends of words that Caleb knows something is very wrong with the person it belongs to. Another comes up to meet it, high-pitched and cracking, it would be grating if he didn’t know it so well, and the words are fast and agitated and growing in pitch with every second. There should be another one, Caleb thinks. There should be another one, softer and warmer with an odd lilt to it that makes it sound like everything it says is some grand joke. It’s not there, though. He watches the purple shape, waiting to hear it, waiting to see a hand lift in a jaunty wave and baubles flash in the light as a horned head pops up with a bright white grin on its face, but nothing comes. There’s no sound, there’s no wave, there’s no lifted head, and the only thing bright and white is the snowfall beginning to gather atop the obnoxiously embroidered coat crumpled around the body where he fell.

Where Mollymauk fell, and he only saw the blood after the carts had pulled away.

He should have left. He could have left. He was _going_ to leave.

( _no he wasn’t, and he’d known that then, too._ )

He could have avoided this, this terrible numbness inside his chest that’s colder than the snow around him and that only comes from feelings, from _attachment_ , from being in far deeper than he’d thought he could be, far deeper than he promised himself he’d ever go. If he’d just _left_.

He’s so smart, and he still didn’t leave when he should have. How smart can he be, really?

“Caleb.”

It’s the one word that makes sense in the tumult of voices from far away that he recognizes but does not comprehend, and he turns his head to it automatically. Beau, eyes watery and red and lips pressed in a tight and quavering line like she’s trying to keep something in her mouth from escaping, staring down at him. “Caleb, c’mon, man, don’t just fuckin’ _leave us_ like that, this is the goddamn _worst_ time to do that shit, I asked you a fuckin’ _question_ here, dude, you could at least — “

She keeps talking but he stops hearing, fascinated with the body language that tells more of a story than just her speech, the high shoulders and taut stance that makes her lean forward on the balls of her feet. He learned very early on how to tell a person's thoughts from their body, and more often than not that fascinates more than words. Her voice starts rising in pitch, growing heated and loud, but he's too busy lookin at how her fists are clenched tight enough that her knuckles are white. Not as white as the snow, Caleb notes, not nearly, but white enough against her skin to see, especially with the rivulets of red still clinging where the skin has split. They’re trembling, too, though that could just be his own body jarring his sight.

“ — fuckin’ _listen to me_ , asshole!”

One of those fists swings and Caleb’s world tilts sharply to one side, stars flashing behind his eyes, and his traitorous legs can’t seem to let him fall properly, either, because all he does is pitch forward and catch himself on his hands, the snow bitingly cold even against the protective cover of his bandages. Nott is yelling now, a furious screech, but Caleb isn’t listening anymore, because the hit turned his head to see that purple shape again, the one that can’t really be real, the one that’s just an illusion and one that will move again the second Molly decides it’s safe to wake up, to just _get up_ and stop playing his stupid game of pretend and start ribbing Beau for caring so bloody much, didn’t know you _could_ , unpleasant one, and Caleb hears his voice so clearly that it makes him suck in a breath, sharp and stinging with cold.

But the shape still doesn’t move, and Caleb wonders for the millionth time why he didn’t leave before.

Caleb Widogast is smart. He knows that the purple shape will not be getting up anytime soon. Caleb Widogast should get up, shrug it off, get on the horse and continue on to Shady Creek Run and find the others and end the slavers and finish the job and get back to Zedash to get the Gentleman’s pay. Because it’s just death. He knows it well, knows the sight and the sound and the smell of it in so many different iterations that he could write a proper book on it. He used to create it. He still does.

So why is this any different? Why is he frozen in the snow, staring, hoping for just a brief lift of a chest, just a little sound, just a tiny blink?

Beau’s voice is back, closer and softer than he thinks he’s ever heard Beau sound before, and suddenly shades of blue obscure his vision, block out the purple, and her mouth is still in such a tight line, barely moving, but there’s determination in her eyes as they try to catch his no matter how often they slide away from hers.

“Caleb. Look, man, I just — it’s fuckin’ freezing, dude. You gotta get up. We gotta get Molly an’ the horses an’ get to a fuckin’ — temple or somethin’, somewhere. You’re — “ She grits her teeth, grinds her words out like it’s a herculean trial. “You’re…super smart, you're brainy, you remember shit. So put that shit to work, there’s gotta be a place around here that had a cleric or a temple or something. We’re runnin’ short on time, _c’mon_ , dude.”

She looks like she could be crying, if she let herself, Caleb notes. It reminds him how much younger than him she is. Has Beau seen _this_ kind of death before? Someone close? If not a friend, then friend adjacent? She should get used to it. Mollymauk would scoff at that kind of thought, if he voiced it aloud, tell him it’s a crock of shit and that they should all try to avoid dying in every form as much as they can for the time being, and he’d _prefer_ staying alive and living to the fullest instead of just laying down and preparing for the inevitable, thank you very much.

_And look what that has got you, Mister Mollymauk. Look how very well you did at that._

“Caleb.” Nott jostles into view, dark and green and bandages and huge yellow eyes that always remind him of Frumpkin. She looks…determined. Not scared the way Beau is, deep down, just serious, though her wide eyes and downturned ears give away her anxiousness, the fiddling of her hands with the flask that she either isn’t aware of or doesn’t care to control. “Caleb, we have to leave, Caleb. Molly — Molly is dead, okay, he's fucking dead, so we have to find a place to bury him and keep going, or - or find a place to take him. But - we’re not actually taking him _with_ us, are we? We’re not dragging a body along with us? It’ll get all gooey and smelly and gross…”

“What the _fuck_ , Nott, of course we’re taking him!” Beau again, her words sharp and angry. How funny Mollymauk would find it if he could hear her trying to save him. “He’s not gonna rot all over the place before we get to Shady Creek —“

“Yes, but that’s where _Lorenzo_ is gonna be and they have friends all over the place there —“

“So, so fuckin’ what?! Fuck ‘em, if they try to stop us we’ll beat their asses, or we’ll just sneak around ‘em —“

“ _They already fucking killed one of us Beau and they’ll kill you and me and Caleb too!_ “

“Nogvurot.”

Silence. Caleb doesn’t recognize the voice that says it, low and calm and a little hoarse but clear enough to cut through the argument like tearing through wet paper. It’s accented. He thinks it could be his.

Beau replies first, still terse but wavering again. Caleb has been with her long enough to recognize the vulnerability in the defensive tone she takes. “What about it?”

“It’s a city,” Nott supplies helpfully, and Caleb feels himself nod.

“It is where the mercenary group said they were from. The Stubborn Stock.” Fjord had filled him in on the conversation when he’d returned from his attempt at finding a library, told secondhand from Yasha. Caleb remembers their smiling leader, the man with very dark hair who grinned every chance he could. “They have a healer. The very old one. He is old enough to know the proper spells, I am sure.”

Beau sucks in a breath, shifts her awkward crouch in front of him, and for a moment Caleb catches a glimpse of purple between the join of her shoulder and Nott’s. “Fuck. That’s right. The guys who wanted Yasha on their side. Shit, that’s not super far from here, if we push the horses —“

“Are we _sure_ that’s what we want to do?” Nott looks wary, ears flat against her head and sharp fangs worrying her bottom lip. It’s quite a task to get them there, and admirable that she doesn’t simply tear it off entirely. “I mean, didn’t he already — come back from the dead once? Couldn’t we just — bury him and, and mark it for later and come back with everyone else and see if it worked?”

“We are only three of us now. We cannot take on that band and get the others with even lesser numbers, they have already beaten us with one more, and beaten us badly. We will need more people, and more planning, if we are going to try again, we will need Mollymauk.” Caleb looks at Beau as he adds, “And Yasha will not forgive us if we leave him here.”

Beau’s lips press together in a thin line. Caleb continues. “And I for one do not see the point in burying him if he is just going to get up again. We might as well bring him back ourselves instead of hoping for the best.”

Nott’s teeth still tug at her lower lip. She will cut herself if she’s not careful, but Caleb can’t quite dredge up the concern to warn her. “Okay, but — but Keg said they — they _break_ the people they capture, and if we go to this, this Nugget Rock, won’t they get even further away? And even closer to, to doing that with Fjord and Jester and Yasha?”

Keg is still with them, Caleb notes in the back of his mind. He has not heard her or seen her, but he hasn’t heard her leave, either. That is another factor to consider. “She said that they will spend a night when they arrive to celebrate, and get to their task the next day, ja? That is an additional day. If we ride hard and make haste, we will not lose much time. And we can possibly get the Stubborn Stock to help us, ja, they were very interested in Yasha before. That will get us more friends on our side.” ‘ _Friends_ ’ doesn’t sit his tongue as well as it has before. It feels so hollow now, like an aftertaste of acid on his tongue.

Nott shifts from foot to foot, peers into his face and then into Beau’s. Beau is still quiet, brow furrowed and eyes dropped to the snow. She has her knuckles pressed down into it now. That is smart, Caleb thinks. Finally, she speaks, and it’s low and cautious, much quieter now. “Keg is still here. She didn’t do a lot of fuckin’ help in that fight, an’ she doesn’t care about Molly. Just that asshole Lorenzo.”

The name again curdles in Caleb’s stomach, a voice in the back of his head that sounds so terribly much like Master Ikithon whispering of all the things he can do to the man, all the ways he’s been taught that would make him suffer for what he’s done. He doesn’t give it voice, responds to Beau instead with the same calm and mechanical voice as before. He hates that he can sound this calm. “She will come with us or she will not, that is up to her and it does not matter to us either way. But if she wants to take down these assholes, she will still want our help, so she will want to come with us.”

His head turns slowly, sluggishly, but it turns, and Caleb sees Keg at last, still kneeling where Lorenzo had left her. She’s digging the hilt of her warhammer into the snow, carving out a deep circle of dirt. Her jaw is set, fire in her eyes, but there’s a bend to her spine and a slouch to her shoulders that Caleb recognizes, that he knows well; he can't not. Guilt is an old friend.

Caleb is smart enough to recognize bits and pieces of himself in other people, he notes. That’s a relief, at least: he can see who the true monsters are.

“She will come,” he repeats, “or she will not. But we should go very soon, we do not have a lot of time. I have read that the cold helps to preserve the bodies of the dead, and it is snowing so that is helpful, but when we start to move him our time will start to run out again so we had better start soon if we are going to bring him back. We still have the — the tapestry, we can put him in that, and we do not have a cart anymore but we can put him on the back of a horse —“

“Not _my_ horse,” Nott interrupts immediately. “I don’t want to ride with a dead body.”

“Put him on mine,” Beau replies, just as quickly. She’s still pressing her knuckles into the snow, working her fingers one by one, but there’s a sharper look to her eyes now, something that could be hope. Caleb wants to warn her against it, wants her to know that nothing is a certainty, but he knows as well as anyone that hope is a motivator. Hope will get them moving again. “He might as well be a burden to me one more time.” It’s some idea of a joke, though not a very good one, and though none of them laugh, the mood seems just a little less bleak. Caleb imagines he can hear Molly's low chuckle in the wind.

“Then it is to Nogvurot.” Caleb’s legs work this time when he stands, trousers soaked through from knees to ankles and white dusting his shoulders and melting on his eyelashes when he blinks. He’s taller than both of them when they kneel, and from here he has a clear sight of that purple shape, almost entirely layered in fine white powder. Like a human-sized donut, he thinks bizarrely, and thinks Jester might appreciate that somehow. There's less numbness in his chest now, though the purple shape remains immobile and unrelenting. They have a plan, and that is a start. “And we will bring him back.”

Beau stands too and starts to turn, only to hesitate, turning abruptly back around with all the grace of a malfunctioning automaton and awkwardly clapping a hand to Caleb’s shoulder. Her hand is cold from its press against the snow, but there’s some odd warmth to the touch. “I’m — sorry. That I hit you. I'm..." Her voice wavers again. "I'm really glad you're like. Here, or whatever.” She pauses, her mouth works for another moment, and Caleb almost thinks she’s going to say something more, but then Beau jerks her hand back and stalks off towards the horses, going for the tapestry. Nott takes longer to leave, hovering by Caleb’s side, and he can feel her eyes on his face even before her small green hand slips into his, coaxing him to look down at her.

“Are…are you okay, Caleb? You’re — you’re with us?”

The snow is catching on the strands of greasy hair that hang loose around her face, but Nott continues to look up, and Caleb looks back, thinks about his watch and all the ways he is setting himself up for disaster. _Liability. Liability. Liability. You should have left._

Caleb Widogast is smart, but he’s not smart enough to do what he needs to do. Not yet.

He squeezes her hand, a soft pressure of fingers against claws.

“Ja. I am with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohhhhh boy i've been crying. first time posting in the cr fandom but not my first time trying to write for it, so let's see how this goes! i cope with my feelings by planning out solutions so hopefully this can put a little note of hope into all the sadness of this past episode.
> 
> part 2 is now up!
> 
> much appreciation and love to matt mercer, taliesin jaffe, and the wonderful cast of critical role for this marvelous, painful world they've allowed us to peek into, don't forget to love each other.


	2. nothing you can measure anymore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mighty Vier - now the Mighty Drei, now the Mighty Funf - head for Nogvurot. Caleb and Nott have a chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from "the future" by leonard cohen.  
> mild tw for a few mentions of alcohol drinking on nott's end, if that bugs you!

“And his coat was really _stupid_ ,” Nott declares, taking a swig of her flask and swaying a little more than she should, even on horseback. She looks determined to be angry about it. “It’s — it’s so colorful! I mean, we’re trying to _blend in_ most places, and he’s just — just _walking around_ like that! And, and I know he has shiny things on his horns and — and _other places_ , probably, but what’s the point of all the fucking colors if there’s not gonna be anything the _least_ bit shiny on it, too? Gold thread _doesn’t_ count, it’s just string, but he couldn’t — couldn’t shell out for some pretty jangly things or, or some bead fringes, it’s all just _colors_. It didn’t even look warm!”

She takes another drink, smacks her lips together and snaps the flask closed with a loud rattle for emphasis. Caleb watches out of the corner of his eye as she stares down at it for a moment, ears drooping and teeth gnawing unconsciously at her lower lip before she shakes her head like a dog shaking off water and puffs herself back up into indignant rage, jabbing her flask accusingly ahead of her, towards the rolled-up tapestry strapped to the back of Beau’s horse. “And his fucking — his fucking _cards_! Who carries around fucking cards everywhere! _Weirdos_ , that’s who!”

There’s a loud sigh and a mutter from the rider in front, but Beau doesn’t tell Nott to be quiet. The first hour of silence before Nott had begun her list of ‘reasons why we shouldn’t miss him at _all_ , why would we miss him, hear me out’ had been hellish, unreal, and Beau’s few attempts to break it — first with him, then with Keg, both horrible choices for the task — had been deeply painful to witness. The whole time, Caleb had been waiting for a loud, gregarious voice with an unplaceable lilt, tired of the stillness and ready with a joke or a story. Secretly, he thinks maybe the others had been waiting for that too.

How strange to know that he keeps… _forgetting_ that Mollymauk is dead. It’s a contradiction, to say that a memory can be near perfect and at the same time say it’s so full of holes, but Caleb has always been a contradiction. Smart but stupid, brave but cowardly, so promising and so disappointing.

“— and his _fucking_ juggling, you’d think he’d get after the fifth fucking time that we _knew_ he could juggle more than four oranges but he was still — still trying to get me to _bet_ on it! Like I'm an idiot!” There’s a pause. “I mean, I did bet on it, but we already _knew_ he could fucking juggle! Give it up already!”

“What is juggling?” The deep, placid voice is a warm contrast to Nott’s shrill tones, and the firbolg woman and sometimes-horse that they’ve come to know as Nila leans in from where she walks beside them, still nearly tall enough on the ground to fall just a head shorter than Nott’s height on horseback. “Why are there oranges involved?”

“Uh — uh.” Nott stammers, her concentration broken as she flails for an answer, and her big yellow eyes turn a bewildered glance towards Caleb. “Well it’s not always oranges, it’s like — it’s this thing, y’know, that, that circus people do, they throw things in the air and — and move them around in a circle, like magic but — _touching_ magic!” She nods, seeming to warm to her theme and encouraged by Nila’s rapt attention. “Except it’s really just catching things _really_ fast. So it’s not really magic, after all.”

“I think that just made me forget what juggling is,” Caleb hears from ahead, low enough to almost escape notice over the rhythmic clanking of plate armor with every clop of horse hooves. Beau lets out an undignified snort, and he sees Keg’s shoulders almost straighten a little, as if pleased to get a laugh. Keg has been just as silent as the rest of them on the day’s journey so far, riding just a little ways behind Beau and slightly more off to the side than the rest of them, a self-imposed exile. He understands why. She’d given them bad information and then she’d frozen, and both had cost them dearly. He sees that knowledge in her face whenever he looks her way.

 _Not her fault,_ whispers the logical, rational part of him, but the part that knows he pays his own penance for his crimes is just as quick to whisper back, _it is, though, and she knows it._ Caleb shakes his head to banish them both, gaze falling back to Nott and Nila.

Nila is nodding solemnly to the explanation, bizarre as it was, and Caleb finds himself a little worried that she truly looks like she understands. He can’t tell if she does or she doesn’t; they’ve only known her a few hours. He’s sure the only reason she’s with them on this detour is because of her determination to find her son, and that at least is a devotion that can tentatively be trusted not to hinder them. For now, anyway. “Ah, so it's a trick. We do tricks in my clan, too. There is a firbolg I know who can make the flowers on the trees dance and sing, and they tell stories in their flower language. Their songs are very beautiful.”

“Oh. That’s…cool.” Nott looks doubtful, uncaps her flask and takes another deep swig. “I didn’t know flowers could sing.”

Nila fairly beams, a big bright smile so different from those of the placid Pumats that Caleb has grown used to. “Oh, yes! Every living creature sings, if you are able to listen closely enough to hear. Frog songs are very pretty, although it has been a long time since I was able to hear one. There are not many frogs in the Crispvale Thicket, but sometimes I would see a few when I was tending the mosses. They can be very damp, and the frogs love to hide beneath them. That is where I heard their songs.”

She pauses, tilting her head to one side and walking in silence for a few moments. Nott squirms uncertainly in her saddle as it stretches out into a minute, and has just opened her mouth to talk before a sadness creeps into Nila’s face and she shakes her head. “There are not many songs in these woods. The trees are old, dying, and there is sickness close by. But soon their time will come again. And then they will return, with new songs that no one has ever heard before. Songs just as pretty as the old ones.”

Now Nott looks almost enraptured by the idea, leaning towards Nila with wide, curious eyes. “How do you hear them? Are they just — just singing? Like right now? Hello trees!” She calls it out to the woods around them, whipping her head from side to side as if to catch one trying to be sneaky. “You — you sound, um, very good! Very pretty! I can’t actually hear you, but — good job!”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Beau has spun around in her saddle, eyes warily scanning the trees around them. Her hand has come to rest on her staff, laid across the saddle behind her, and Caleb realizes belatedly that he himself has a hand on his spellbook in its holster, tensed and ready for action. “You can’t just fuckin’ _yell_ like that, man, you don’t know what’s out here! Somethin’ might hear us!”

“I’m talking to the fucking trees, I _want_ them to hear me! Uh — don’t listen to her, trees!” Nott tilts her head back this time, claws cupped around her mouth, and Caleb winces at the newly amplified volume. “Keep it up! You sound _amazing_!”

“What are you, nuts?” Keg hisses from Caleb’s left, and Nott flashes her an irritated look before looking up and taking a deep breath to start calling out again. Caleb nudges his horse forward quickly and lays a hand on her arm before she can, startling her to a halt.

“Maybe it is best to stay…” They haven’t exactly been _quiet_ , what with her extended ranting, so he amends his words mid-speech, hushed enough to only be heard between the two of them. “… _a little_ more quiet than that, we have not been here before, we do not know what we are getting into. The... _singing trees_ are all around us, I am confident they can hear you if you whisper.”

Nott’s eyes narrow at his tone, and she opens her mouth to protest, glancing left and right — and then stops. Caleb watches her ears droop, watches her seem to shrink into herself, shoulders hunching and chin tucking against her chest. She almost looks like a sulking child, except that Caleb knows her better than that, and when he dips his head to get a better look at her face, he’s shocked to see her gnawing at her lower lip furiously, blinking rapidly before muttering out a dejected “Okay, Caleb.”

He doesn’t move away, stays there staring at her and trying to puzzle through her sudden change in attitude. It makes him feel almost bad for helping Beau and Keg scold her, and almost distantly, he imagines he hears the flippant tone of Mollymauk dismissing their concerns, saying _oh c’mon, let her have a little fun. Besides, it’d be pretty bloody interesting if the trees talked back._

Ah. That’s what Nott had been looking for, too.

He’s tempted to offer some word of comfort, some small relief, but in the end he can’t. The words won’t come. So Caleb gives her an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder instead, before letting his horse’s pace slow, falling back to his position behind the rest of the group. Keg turns back around with a mutter as soon as he does, though all Caleb catches of it is “fucking weird”, but Beau stays twisted around in her saddle, still watching the treeline with an expression that he can’t quite define before finally, warily, looking back at the road ahead. Something unnamed and unknown twists in Caleb’s stomach, knowing that a few days before, Beau might have been curious if the trees talked back too. Nila is quiet, clearly sensing the tension, and so is Nott.

They ride in silence, the only noises the soft crunch of leaves under horses’ hooves and the clink of Nott’s flask every time she takes a drink — frequently, which tempts Caleb to ask her to slow down, though he doesn’t. Then Beau sighs heavily, tilting her head back to stare up at the canopy overhead.

“You're right, his fuckin’ cards were annoying. _So_ glad I took them so that asshole can’t haunt me with them.”

There’s the clink of a flask opening. “I mean, we’re bringing him back in — in a day or two, and then he’ll just haunt you with them alive.”

There’s a very long pause. Caleb waits patiently.

“Shit.”

\-------------------------------------------------

“What do you want to do, Caleb?”

It’s a cold night, the first of hopefully few they have to spend on the road, and they have second watch, sitting side by side on the hard-packed earth with their backs against bark the grey-green of dead moss. The snow has been cleared in a ragged square around them by the methodical sweep of an earthen paw, but it does little to keep the chill from their bones, and after an hour of pretending it doesn’t affect her, Nott had curled up against Caleb’s side and drawn his coat around her shoulders as far as it will go. The only real benefit of the cleared spot is that their clothing won’t get damp, and that small sanctuary won’t last long; already, the gently falling snow is dusting over brown with grey and white. It dusts them too, flakes clinging to the seams of Nott’s dark hood and melting from Caleb’s eyelashes as he blinks down at her, eyes owlish behind Keg’s broken spectacles.

He doesn’t bother trying to puzzle out the meaning behind the very vague question, takes it to mean the current moment and answers slowly. “I want to, eh, study my spells until our watch is over, and then sleep, but if you would like to discuss something in the meantime —“

“Not ‘what do you want to do right _now_ ‘,” Nott interrupts. She hesitates, then takes a drink from her flask, for long enough that Caleb almost goes back to his reading before she lowers it and wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “What do you want to do about...about the group? Now that it’s just you, me, and Beau. From — from the original us.”

She doesn’t know of his conversation with himself the night before their failed attack, she can’t. She had been asleep, he’d watched. He’d made sure. Caleb keeps his outward calm, tapping his index finger in a slow rhythm against the page of his spellbook as he chooses his answer carefully, his voice the practiced neutral of someone with things to hide. “I do not understand the question. We are going to Nogvurot to find the Stubborn Stock cleric and bring back Mollymauk, and then we will go to the Shepherds with their aid —“

"You’re acting like before.” It catches him off guard, soft and sad and serious, and it draws Caleb from his usual semi-averted gaze to really look at Nott, now, to see the slump to her shoulders, the far-too-keen eyes boring into his the moment he makes uncomfortable eye contact. He must look as confused as he feels, because she sighs again, and there’s a sort of disappointment to the sound that bizarrely makes Caleb’s stomach churn. “You were talking so much, Caleb, it was so good, and you were _eating_ and your shirt’s even a little tighter! Which is a good thing!” she hastens to add as Caleb frowns and glances down at himself. “And you were — were smiling a little sometimes and, and telling jokes, you told a _joke_ , Caleb! Even if you pretended you didn't! And now you sit off by yourself and don’t talk so much except when someone talks to you or when we’re planning something, and i saw you smell that shitty soup that Beau made the other night, like you did when we were scared that she hated everyone enough to poison all of us because she always had that _look_ on her face, and — and I’m worried! That’s all! And we’ve been friends for — for months, right? We _are_ friends, right?”

He doesn’t respond, perhaps for far too long, because sharp little goblin claws prick at his knee and Nott repeats herself. “ _Right_?”

“Ja, right, right.” It tumbles out despite his reluctance, and Caleb meets her eyes again and nods, just to give the words more strength.

Her ears flatten against her head. “You don’t have to say it if you don’t mean it, Caleb.”

There’s no reason that should make him feel guilty, but he finds himself leaning forward, looking intently into her face. “We are friends, Nott. The two of us, we have worked together for — for a while, now, and I value many of your abilities and opinions. Very highly.” She doesn’t seem convinced, and Caleb tries again, taking her small hand in his and squeezing it. “You are my greatest friend. I would not be here without you, in any sense of the phrase.”

It seems to do the trick, because some of the intensity in Nott withers, and she pats his hand haltingly with her free one before pulling both back to herself, looking down and fumbling with her flask. “Good. I just — wanted to make sure. You couldn’t say it, before, about — about everyone. But i _am_ your friend.” Her eyes lift to his again, solemn and so oddly old for her age. “And — and that means you can talk to me, right? Not about _everything_ , y’know, I don’t care like, where you piss or, or anything _weird_ like that, I just mean. If you were going to run away, you would tell me? Wouldn’t you?”

It’s so hard these days, to look her in the face and see that wariness, that doubt. He'd never expected it to be this difficult. It’s even harder to nod, a sick feeling in his stomach that has been showing up more and more often when he lies to these people, and the feeling only worsens when Caleb extends his hand gravely, pinky finger raised in a mimicry of Jester’s cheerful insistences of something called a ‘pinky promise’. Nott recognizes it and her ears droop — that sick feeling again like a little knot in his stomach — but then her shoulders straighten and she links her pinky finger firmly with his. Which hurts, because she is gripping on very tightly and scratching his knuckle with a nail and pulling his hand down at the same time, but Caleb suffers it for the sake of the gesture, and continues to embellish the lie with a soft voice. “We are a team, ja? The two of us, we are together in this.”

Nott nods, and he can see her fighting with something for a moment before she blurts out, “We _all_ are. You know that, right?” Caleb starts to withdraw his hand but she clings to his pinky finger tightly and gives it an insistent tug. “No, don’t run away again. you did that before, too. I want to hear you _say_ it, Caleb. We could have run before, we _could_ have, we talked about it so many times, but we never did, not even when we gave our _blood_ to a — a creepy wet guy in a basement who _really_ needs a napkin. A-and when you saw — “ Her voice drops to a stage whisper, her expression briefly apologetic. “ — _you know who_ , at the fighting pit thing, you were scared out of your mind, I know you were. But you didn’t run then, either. We didn’t even know why you were acting so weird, then, you could have been gone and none of us would have known anything. So you have to say it, now. We’re a team. They're your friends.”

For a moment, a fleeting fraction of an instant, Caleb thinks he might. For a moment, he thinks he might say that he cares for these people.

But the moment passes and the words turn to ash on his tongue; maybe it’s the mention of Ikithon that does it, that reminds him sharply of how much he’s already lost and how much he has to learn, how much he needs to accomplish. And Caleb stays silent. Caleb sits as still as he can, doesn’t make any attempt to pull his hand back again or even to pull away entirely and walk away. Caleb stares her down with all the will in his body, ignoring the discomfort of eye contact, silently willing Nott to give it up, to not make this so difficult.

After three minutes and seven seconds, she does, dropping her eyes and sighing heavily — oh how he hates that sick feeling in his stomach — before releasing his hand. ( _she doesn’t comment on how it lingers in the space between them for a moment longer before he draws it back to himself and lets it pull his spellbook against his chest like a protective shield._ ) “It's okay. You don’t have to say it, anyway. I _know_ that you care about them. I know that they matter to you. And sooner or later, Caleb, I’m gonna hear you say that out loud.”

There’s a pause then, a long one, in which the snow falls and dampens Caleb's collar until it sticks against his neck, and then Nott’s voice gets softer, sadder. “It’s just us now. Nila and Keg will leave eventually, and then it’s just gonna be you and me and Beau. And — and the others, definitely! But we don't know that yet. Molly, he wanted people to be happy. And — and we can be happy, with them. _You_ can be happy. With _us_."

A chill runs down Caleb's spine to hear that 'us', no longer about him and Nott but about Nott and everyone else. _You should have left when you could._

Nott takes another deep swig and hiccups, then continues. "I know you want to, to change time and space and whatever, but he’d — he’d want that, probably. For us to be happy. Just for a little while.” Another pause, and then so soft that he almost misses it: “You deserve to have friends, Caleb.”

But he doesn’t, and he knows this. He doesn’t deserve them, and he doesn’t want them. He can’t have them. He has work to do.

Sentiment has always been his undoing, his weakness, the knife in his back that had pressed deep on the night his parents burned and has twisted with every moment since, with every opportunity to get a big smile out of Jester, or a friendly — if painful — shoulder punch from Beau, or a delighted laugh out of Mollymauk. Sentiment ended his old life and has dogged him in this new one, and Caleb has plans. Caleb has _ambitions_. Caleb has a world to fix and reality to bend, and he cannot. Grow. Attached.

_But you are. You are._

“Perhaps in another life,” he says, just as softly, and if Nott gives him a look that is terribly weary and terribly, terribly sad as he turns another page in his spellbook, he pretends not to see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well it's been like. a month but i finally wrote that part 2 i was talking about! and it took me so long because i've also been writing part 3, and 4, and maybe 5, and possibly 6, that come after this one, so sorry about that. i've also never written multichapter before, let's cross our fingers y'all. if you like it, comment and let me know!


	3. i can't run but i can walk much faster than this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nogvurot. Acquaintance is remade with the Stubborn Stock. Another goodbye, but not for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an update? with MY schedule? it's more likely than you'd think! extra long chapter to just get us moving along!  
> title is from "can't run but" by paul simon.

Nott falls asleep before dawn, curled up against Caleb’s side, and he reads until his eyes ache. Which happens to start just a few moments before Beau sits bolt upright with a shout.

He stays carefully still as her head whips from side to side, hand lashing out towards her pack and her throwing stars before reality seems to catch up to her and she stops, chest heaving. After several seconds of sitting motionless, she huffs out a sharp breath, scrubs furiously at her eyes with her knuckles before dropping her heaed against her knees with a painful-sounding _thunk_. The air is still for ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty, and then Beau lifts her head once more, breathing much more calmly but still tensed, ready for a fight. Their eyes lock across the snow, and Caleb understands immediately the strain in her face, the disoriented dart to her eyes, the beginnings of dark shadows beneath them.

She’s still so young. Older than he had been, but that’s not a good enough reason. It will never be a good enough reason.

Beau is brave, the way Mollymauk had been. Young and brave like Molly, but not dead. Not yet. How much longer does she have?

( _why does that thought make him unhappy?_ )

He doesn’t say anything, though the eye contact is deeply uncomfortable and sets his fingers twitching, and eventually their impromptu staring contest must register because Beau blinks rapidly and twists her face into her customary scowl. Two fingers go up in a sign for peace. “‘Sup.”

Caleb watches her another moment, takes in the stubborn set to her jaw that says _I’m not talking about it_ and slowly mimics her peace sign. “’Sup.’”

A grimace stamps itself into the lines of Beau’s face. “Gods, dude. Don’t — don’t try to be cool. Doesn’t work for you.”

It probably doesn’t. Caleb tilts his head to one side, maintaining his deadpan stare at her nose and drawing out the sound of the word until it's ridiculous. “Cooool-uh.”

Beau sighs, mutters something that sounds like “never mind” before clambering to her feet and scooping up her staff, but he sees a flicker of a smirk at the corner of her mouth and peculiar satisfaction warms his chest. She starts to walk away before faltering, swivels her head around to take in the campsite and their still-sleeping companions before landing back on Caleb. She jerks her thumb towards the trees — a bit unnecessarily, since they’re in a forest and there’s nowhere else for her to go. “Takin’ a leak.”

Caleb doesn’t reply immediately, studying her as she hovers. The taut line of her jaw is still there, as if daring him to try to stop her. Typical of Beau. But the way that her hand opens and closes on her staff is not, nor is the uncomfortable shifting from foot to foot. The latter can probably be explained by the aforementioned need to take a piss, but there’s something uncertain, too. Like she might actually stay if Caleb asked her to.

He doesn’t, though. Just nods and looks back down at his book. “Noted.”

He gets another three lines down the page before realizing he’s heard no response, and just as he begins to wonder if he should look up, there’s an abrupt: “Right, yeah. Whatever. Just — keep an eye out.”

Caleb does look up then, in time to see her turn and stalk towards the trees, and keeps his eyes on her back until he can’t see her anymore. Her words puzzle him, turning over and over in his head before they finally click, and he realizes with an unpleasant sinking feeling that the last time some of their group had walked off, those some had not returned.

A cold pit of burgeoning dread opens in his stomach, insisting that he send Frumpkin after her in case anything goes wrong, but he crushes it down, shakes his head doggedly and turns back to his reading. _There’s nothing to fear,_ he tells himself sternly, _she is strong —_ ( _they were strong_ ) _— and you are not attached to these people, mind your goal Widogast,_ but by the time Beau returns, Caleb realizes that he’s turned the pages twice and doesn’t remember reading a word.

The others begin to rouse after that — mostly to the unkind nudging of Beau’s foot and the violently loud clanking of Keg’s armor as she puts it back on — and they’re packed up and beginning their trudge onwards just as the first glow of grey morning light begins to crest the treeline.

It’s cloudy, Caleb notes idly as they trudge on. Threatening another fall of snow. They haven’t seen the sun in the sky since Mollymauk died. Strangely, that feels fitting.

He walks the first two hours to try and keep himself awake after his long night, leading his horse with one hand while the other remains tucked beneath his coat with fingers running restlessly over the cover of his spellbook. It’s something tangible to focus on, as the fatigue of sleeplessness fogs his thinking and threatens to tangle him in anxious ramblings.

It’s precaution, too: he will be ready, the next time they’re attacked. He will be close enough to do something. That much is a promise he’s made, to the tapestry bundle on the back of beau’s horse.

When did he start to make promises to these people? Now there’s a thought, and Caleb feels his lips twitch in dry amusement. When did traveling with this band of crazy people become something with enough certainty to it to go beyond momentary truces for the common good, beyond empty compromises in exchange for continued safety? When did he, Caleb Widogast, liar and murderer and con man and monster, actually begin to _mean_ the words he’s said?

 _Don’t be foolish._ it’s a stern voice that whispers, one that could be his own and one that could be his old teacher’s; those lines have long since blurred. _You cannot make promises to a dead man, Widogast, he cannot hear you. You cannot carry his name like a banner, even if you were worthy to. And why would you want to? He cannot help you now. He cannot do anything for you. He does not matter. When he is revived, then you can make your foolish promises, but right now, be smart. Sentimental is not smart._

“Protect them because they can protect you in return,” he murmurs to himself, barely audible. “No other reason. There is no other reason.”

To his right, he catches a flick of a large green ear and ignores it — Nott won’t say anything in front of the others. And as long as they continue their exhausting breakneck pace to Nogvurot, there will be enough time for her to forget she heard anything at all.

After two hours and twenty minutes, he trips over a tree root and twists his ankle, and Beau threatens to physically throw him over the back of his horse unless he gets his ‘scrawny ass in the saddle where you won’t fucking die stubbing your toe on a rock’. The trouble there, however, is that his horse is carrying Mollymauk today, and for all that Caleb is used to a proximity to death, the responsibility of riding alongside their murdered companion is one that he adamantly refuses.

So they stop to figure out how to rearrange themselves. Added time that makes him feel absurdly guilty. Caleb offers to continue walking and is glared down by both Beau and Nott. Keg offers her horse but is quickly shot down by three simultaneous negatives in favor of a more subtle presence, and subsides with a sullen clank of armor as Nila graciously takes her horse form and resolves the matter that way. Nott passes the flask around several times and drinks far too much herself. They ride on.

Their first sight of the city of Nogvurot — three hours later, all of them on their feet and horses trailing behind as they wade through what has become a field of tall grasses up to their waists, some with biting edges that sting Caleb’s fingers as he pushes them aside and many with burrs that he will be picking from his clothes for hours to come — is a wooden palisade, cresting over a rolling hill. Nott is the one to spot it, tapping the top of Caleb’s head excitedly with one slightly painful claw from her perch on his shoulders and hissing “there! there!” loud enough that Nila — now back to her original form — all the way in the back of their marching order gasps quietly and Beau in the front looks up sharply.

For a moment, Caleb is frozen in time, staring at the structure like it will fade to dust if he so much as blinks.

Then goblin claws dig into his scalp and Nott shrieks “Come on! Come on!”

Suddenly the fatigue of an early morning matters little next to the promise of salvation, of easing guilty consciences, and they’re running before Caleb is aware he’s joined them, Beau leagues ahead of them and Keg puffing as she valiantly tries to keep pace. Nila lopes like a deer when she runs, and Caleb can feel even more the ungainliness of his sprint, lungs straining and chest taut and wiry legs aching after only a short few steps — not helped by Nott now standing on his shoulders, teetering dangerously with hands fisted in his hair and screeching out every new structure as it comes into view — but the physical pain doesn’t matter when they’re so close, _so close_ , and there’s something looser about the knot in his chest as the ramshackle walls of the city begin to come into focus.

The others seem to feel it too, this semi-hysterical euphoria at just the slightest lick of luck after the days they’ve had, as Beau starts to whoop and does an abrupt about-face to tackle Keg into the grass, the dwarf going down with a yelp and the sound of a thousand kitchen implements rattling. Nott shrieks with joy as Caleb staggers to a stop, hands on his knees and panting with their efforts, and her bandaged arms wind around his head in a hug that he has to return, lifting her off his shoulders and drawing her to his chest in a tight squeeze that has her kicking him painfully in the thighs in playful protest. His eyes find Nila eventually, watching Keg and Beau wrestle in the dirt, and though they’ve been on separate journeys until just a day or two ago, there’s no mistaking the relief in her eyes, the soft and weary smile.

( _her quiet kindness reminds him of his mother and the tension twists back into his chest like it had never left._ )

There’s no time to collect themselves, not when Mollymauk’s time is borrowed and steadily running out, so they continue, clutching the stitches in their sides ( Caleb ) and raking burrs from their hair ( Keg, Beau ). The gates are slats of wood haphazardly beaten together into a rectangle, stakes with a few rotting heads of beasts and goblins — Caleb covers Nott’s eyes with his hand when he’s sure — propped up along the walls, and everything looks…ramshackle, put together out of convenience with no greater plan in store and repaired the same way because it worked well enough the last time around. They pass through the gates with the briefest and sloppiest of inspections from the entrance guard — Empire-branded but the armor is sweat-stained and dented, the eyes glazed and bored, they are far enough from the reach of lords and masters that the duty of a Crownsguard is practically name only — and enter into the city with the horse that bears their precious cargo led in the center of their pack.

Nogvurot doesn’t quite look like shit, Caleb admits to himself, but it’s close.

In all his readings, he's only ever seen Nogvurot mentioned as a settlement rather than a city. It makes sense now, to see the roughness to its build that speaks of lax laws and eyes in the shadows. What passes for a main road is hard dirt, packed solid with the cold but scarred with the impressions of countless horses and carts and creatures who have ventured along it during the muddier months, and the buildings that line it are as crooked and shoddy as the walls that contain them, leaned together in slapdash set-ups that were once probably meant to be only temporary but that have simply never been changed.

The buildings themselves seem as much a roadway as the one they walk — when he looks up, Caleb makes out what can only be catwalks, railings that line the flattened rooftops and planks that rattle alarmingly with passersby from far up above the main street. There are some with ropes tied off to the outside walls, strung with baskets that are steadily hauled back and forth to deliver lumber to the waiting guards-slash-carpenters waiting to add on to the defenses. A pulley system that can probably double as a weapons delivery system or a means of delivering food to the defenders if needed. It's smart. Smart and easy to manage.

It’s made just as clear as soon as he looks to his right and watches a man nearly bludgeoned by a fallen basket that it’s an imperfect system, as is everything else about Nogvurot: a city in progress, endlessly evolving. Bizarre in so many ways, and yet it seems to sustain itself just fine in its curious limbo. From every quarter, the smell of cooking meat carries on the air and makes Caleb’s mouth water, a smell that Nott apparently notices too from the sudden tightening of her grip on his hair and the barely audible whine he can hear. He pats her leg soothingly and she subsides, but he lets her down when they pass a row of cooked birds — of what nature is no longer obvious — and pretends to be surprised and stern when she returns to his side gnawing on one.

Nogvurot is a settlement of contradictions as well: for all the noise, clanking tankards and sizzling meat and loud bellowing voices, there’s very few people that Caleb can see on the streets and in the open. Through a half-open window, he catches a glimpse of several humanoids of varying races all huddled together around a card table, probably far more than should be in the room all at once; through another, there’s a half-orc and what might be a lizardfolk pummeling each other into the wooden flooring, already suspiciously darkly stained. It’s a gambling town, then, not surprising with such little empire involvement this far out.

Caleb subtly adjusts his belt pouches to a more secure arrangement as they walk.

Beau looks far too pleased with it all, despite the circumstances, eyes darting from one low-lit window to another with a growing grin that can only be described as being shark-like. She lingers a little longer at each new spectacle, and as they pass yet another fight she almost strays to join the circle entirely, and Caleb’s stomach sinks regretfully every time he taps her arm to pull her back. Nott is no less rapt with attention, albeit on people’s purses, but Keg coughs not-at-all-subtly from behind them every time she starts to casually sidle away from the group, and Caleb is grateful, bizarrely, for every scowl Nott gives in reply.

Keg, he doesn’t concern himself with looking at; she worked with worse than these types in her past, he thinks with abrupt loathing, a darkness that he shakes immediately. Nila warrants a backwards glance, however, and Caleb finds himself actually a little surprised at the wariness in her posture, the way she shies back from the windows and closer to Keg (who doesn’t look exactly pleased about being frequently bumped into but who seems to get it). Part of him had expected a vacant smile, a too-willing acceptance of new experiences. The thought makes him slightly guilty, for a moment; places like Nogvurot, those are new experiences for him. For Beau. For Nott. It’s so easy to forget that others may not be as accepting of the general violence of the world. Of other people.

He finds himself trailing back to walk beside her for a moment, watching her stare over his head with a furrowed brow at a huddled mass of beggars they pass in a doorway.

“Not every city is as messy as this one,” he finds himself saying. Her eyes flick to his and they’re unsure, compelling him to continue. “There are always the bad parts of cities, I think we are in one now, but eh, not everywhere is quite like this.”

Nila nods, but her ear flicks. Caleb knows it from Nott’s similar habit, when she’s upset. “Nature is very violent. Things die all the time in the woods.” The conviction is there, but so is a wavering undercurrent of distress. “But not for fun. Things don’t kill each other for fun. It isn’t natural.”

“People do,” he points out. “People do that a lot.”

“But are they really people if they have to hurt each other to feel like people?” Nila asks softly, eyes tracking a limping goliath with a permanent sneer etched into what little lip he has remaining to him.

Caleb doesn’t have an answer to that. He walks with her in silence for an appropriate amount of time and then speeds up to rejoin Nott.

Where Nogvurot passes from simple to official becomes clear as the network of bridges overhead begins to recede and the sea of crowded, stacked buildings gives way to more Empire-mandated architecture. Caleb recognizes it immediately: cobblestone pathways that are now mostly buried in the mud, haphazard wooden walls exchanged for neat — if weather worn — stacks of stone and mortar, an equal distance between each officious looking building. The remnants of some form of government, after all.

None of the stone buildings look particularly populated, despite their officious nature. One that might have been a guard hall has boards across its windows, stained with various paints and rude epitaphs that Nott immediately starts trying to pronounce. Though the doors stand ajar and people in just as dingy a uniform as the gate guards slip in and out as he watches, Caleb decides immediately that it isn’t a place worth their time, or worth any amount of coin required for information on their actual destination.

One — smaller, perhaps intended to be a Lawmaster’s office — has no doors entirely, and a bored-looking gnomish man with hair redder than fire and eyes glazed under some substance or another leans in the doorway, tapping a stick against a crudely written sign with numbers and names on it. A betting place, Caleb decides, and starts to reach out to keep Beau from drifting.

His hand passes through empty air, however, which isn’t what he’d planned, and Caleb turns to look only to see Beau several paces ahead of them, jaw set and focus zeroed in on a well-tanned man leading a small party ahead of them, all in dusty armor and laden with mud-caked packs. The tanned man in front looks the most chipper out of all of them, calling out to those behind him with an easy grin and clapping others on the back; the only sign of his similar exhaustion is the frequency with which he wipes his brow, and the dark tangle down his back that Caleb supposes used to be a braid before whatever endeavor they’ve just returned from.

It clicks, then. A single long, dark braid, a tan, and an insouciant smile, and Caleb hastens to catch up with Beau, hearing Nott’s scurrying feet beside him and not bothering to check on the rest.

He’s not fast enough to keep Beau from shouting out “hey, DARROW!” into the bustling square, which dims every conversation to a lull and then to silence as every eye turns on the monk storming her way towards the man at full speed, intensity in every line of her face. One of the people behind him — a half-elven woman, Caleb remembers her from the arena — steps out protectively, unslinging one of her two warhammers from her back, but Darrow waves a hand at her, signaling her back. He doesn’t seem bothered as she careens his way, nor does he react as she grabs the front of his partial plate armor and yanks him almost off his feet, glaring directly into his eyes.

“You. You have a cleric, yeah?”

“Beauregard, this is not how to ask for _assistance_ ,” Caleb hisses as he finally catches up, laying a hand on her shoulder and ignoring her growl for him to remove it. She needs to be thinking strategically now, instead of with her fists, and he tries to tell her with his eyes, with the warning flex of his fingers. They have no room to play with fate in this. “We are visitors here.”

“No, it’s not a problem,” Darrow cuts in, though his smile has slipped into something a little more taut, and he pats Beau’s hand soothingly, quickly removing it when she lets out a loud, annoyed sigh. “Here in Nogvurot, we are a little more accustomed to rough greetings, eh? And this is not the worst I’ve had. I remember the two of you, from the Victory Pit in Zadash, yes? You are Yasha’s booker,” he addresses Beau, who snorts. “Of course, you are the Mighty Nein. But ah, you seem to be missing a few members, and you say you are need of assistance, what can we provide?”

Caleb squeezes Beau’s shoulder a little harder and she lets out a huff through her nose, releasing the front of Darrow’s armor and slapping Caleb’s hand away hard enough that it stings. He doesn’t complain, he’d deserved it.

“We ran into some rough shit,” she grunts, crossing her arms across her chest. Darrow hasn’t made a move to back out of their close proximity and Beau doesn’t either. “Left us down a couple people, and then on the way to get them we…we lost someone.” Her voice wavers just a little, just enough for Caleb to know, and there’s extra anger in her words as she continues, as if covering the slip. “You have a cleric. We need a cleric. So, let’s do this.”

Darrow studies her face for a long moment, eyes flickering over to Caleb and then behind to Nott and Nila and Keg, then once more to the bundle on the back of Caleb’s horse. Real sympathy replaces the casual indifference, accompanied by a click of his tongue. “You have my condolences. Come inside, come inside, we will see what we can do for you, ah? Just allow me and my people to get settled first, we have just come from a long week of work and wish to be once again within our temporary home.”

“Make it snappy,” Beau says shortly, and there’s a snort from the dwarven man behind Darrow, who himself just looks amused by the demand. To his credit, the earnestness hasn't left his expression, and Caleb finds himself all the more curious about the man.

“We will get what we need done at the speed that is best for us. Come, we are not but a few seconds’ walk. You have caught us at a convenient time, no?”

It’s the third stone building that they enter, adorned with a ragged-looking rust-colored banner that is clearly meant to be carried but that has been made to fashion as a decoration instead. The inside is cold and dark when they step in, making Beau scowl and Caleb pull his coat a little tighter, but one of the Stubborn Stock members begins immediately going to each empty sconce, murmuring an arcane word and bringing flames shooting to life atop each torch, and the room begins ever so slowly to brighten and heat up. Most of the mercenaries scatter, disappearing down a hatch in the back of the room or up the stairs beside it, until it’s only the Mighty Nein — or whatever it’s become — left in the main hall, finding sitting room and standing room and waiting with growing impatience as the seconds tick by.

Beau is just scraping her chair back loudly to go track down Darrow when he returns down the stairs with the memorably wizened cleric, who has to be helped, tottering nearly bent double to see the steps. His welcoming smile flickers slightly at the side of the bloodstained bundle of tapestry laid unceremoniously across what must be a dining table of some sort, but he gives no other sign of irritation, clapping his hands together to draw their attention. “So you have come for the assistance of a cleric, yes? And why do you seek us, and not some, I’m sure much more official line of inquiry?”

“You know us from before and you are the closest there is,” Caleb replies, as Beau grits her teeth impatiently. “We recalled that you told our friends you were stationed here, only a day from where our, eh, incident took place. We are very low on options, this far north.”

Darrow nods the whole way through, also pointedly ignoring the way that Beau’s foot has begun to tap and the soft clinking as Keg shifts her weight. “That is true, you have chosen a very inconvenient place to be attacked.” It’s meant to be light, but Beau’s expression darkens and Keg scowls at the floor, and Darrow’s eyes flick between them as he presses on, still cool and collected. “We here of the Stubborn Stock are happy to lend out our services as required, especially for such similar-minded friends of the Empire. But we are not a charity, you understand, we will require a fee.”

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Beau snaps, fists tightening until her knuckles whiten.

Darrow spreads his hands, looking for all the world the regretful businessman and seemingly surprisingly sincere about it. “We have expenses, as does every group in our line of work. I am not choosy, I am willing to work within your limits, but for a group so accomplished as yourselves…let us set the starting price at a hundred gold, hm? That is not too unreasonable, certainly.”

There’s no other option and everyone in the room knows it. Beau swears under her breath and starts to rummage for her belt pouch, Caleb begins to meticulously count his meager funds into the palm of his hand, coin by coin. Even Keg begins to reach under her armor in a way that’s terrifyingly intimate, but Nott beats them all to it, stepping forward and upending her coin purse onto the stone floor. The clink and clatter of coin is deafening, a glittering shower of gold interspersed here and there with buttons and the occasional ring, and when nothing more is produced by a few experimental shakes, Nott tosses it down and looks up at Darrow with serious yellow eyes.

“Fix him,” she says shortly, and after a few beats of silence, Darrow starts to laugh.

-

They leave Mollymauk with the Stubborn Stock, in the end. Beau argues for an immediate resurrection, insists that they need him, but the cleric is exhausted, his higher level spells used up on their previous job, and in the end they agree that eight hours is too long to wait. Beau fumes as they set the body down in the building’s temple, wrapped in its tapestry and framed in the light from the filmy stained glass above the dais. It’s a hideous combination, the reds and golds and greens against the silver and white and blue, and when the cleric peels back the tapestry to administer a Gentle Repose spell, the same effect against the multi-patterned coat becomes nearly blinding. Caleb thinks suddenly, bizarrely, that Mollymauk would be far too pleased about that.

The light fades from the cleric’s hand and out of the corner of his eye Caleb sees Nott lean forward, peering anxiously at the body as if expecting to see some change, but there is none. He’s still a body on a bed of rock, copper coins now glinting over his eyes in a way far duller than the sparks of merriment that used to illuminate the red beneath. There’s still dried blood caked into the fabric of his shirt, and just as abruptly as before, Caleb thinks that he hates it. Dirt and grime is nothing to him, a familiar armor adorned to keep prying eyes away from him, but that hadn’t ever been Mollymauk’s way. That filth is not something he’d chosen but something that had been inflicted upon him, and in this moment Caleb wants nothing in the world quite as much as to see it banished.

“He’ll be preserved for your return.” The cleric is _terrifyingly_ old, with a high reedy voice, and the words fizzle out in a mumble that Caleb has to lean in to decipher. “And if y’don’t return, we’ll attempt the ritual on the last day all th’same.”

Nott looks up at Beau and then at Caleb, ears twitching anxiously. She’s fiddling with her flask again, twisting the cap back and forth repeatedly. “What if he wakes up and he doesn’t remember who he is again?”

“We will be here to remind him,” Caleb tells her, taking her tiny hand in his, but the promise feels leaden on his tongue now, with their mortality weighing on them like it hadn’t before, and seems to sound that way to Nott as well, who nods like she’s been reassured but looks down and begins to worry at her lip.

“We’ll be back.” Beau says it fiercely, like she’s expecting the cleric to challenge her on it and is ready to swing if he does. “We _will_.”

“And if we are not, nature will care for him,” Nila puts in serenely. Nott twitches and takes a long swig from her flask, but the firbolg takes no notice, continuing seemingly unaware of the dourness of her words. “He has returned to the earth once already, it knows him now. It will make him welcome.”

“Yeah,” Keg replies dubiously, her fingers drumming against the haft of her warhammer. “Thanks. I feel…so much better now.”

There’s a moment then, a silence that feels like it sticks in everyone’s throats. Everyone wants to say something else: Caleb can see Beau’s throat working as she swallows a few times, Keg’s eyes darting between the rest of them and Mollymauk’s body, Nott much less subtle as she whips her head back and forth to see who will talk first. Only Nila seems to have no desire to fill the emptiness, though Caleb can see her thumb tracing the cord of her smell bag and knows that she’s waiting for something too.

_Say something. Say anything. Move or be lost here._

“We don’t have much time,” he says finally, and regrets it. Shoulders slump, ears droop, the tension is all the heavier in the silence that begins to creep back in. Then the end of a bo staff cracks into the cobblestone floor and sends a flurry of flinches through their group.

“One step left.” Beau says it fiercely, in a way that has Nott’s hands tighten on her crossbow and that sends a fizz of energy through Caleb’s bones. He looks over to see her eyes burning into his, undercut with sleepless shadows and full of a righteous fury that can only be achieved by the young.

Young and brave. _Brave, dead — semantics, really._ He’d said that before, to be proven right in a flurry of snow and blood.

He nods to her, small and subtle. She nods back, short and sharp.

“Let’s haul ass, guys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was an ABSOLUTE BEAR to finish, mostly because i got stuck on the description. it's a city that matt hasn't beautifully described yet, i had imposter syndrome writing it all out! but we're here, at last, and the chapters after this are mostly completed so updates will hopefully come faster after this!
> 
> also i know i'm now suuuuper behind the times with all the FANTASTIC episodes that have come out since i started but this is a passion project and my way of resolving molly for myself, because i'm still not there yet, so i'm gonna finish it dammit!
> 
> comments and kudos are always appreciated!


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